Figure 3
Upregulation of tRNA fragments in plasma correlated with a high NAFLD activity score in patients with NAFLD. The top 5 enriched Gene Ontology (GO) terms in biological process (BP), cellular component (CC), and molecular function (MF) categories for the target genes of (A) tRF-Val-CAC-005, (B) tiRNA-His-GTG-001, and (C) tRF-Ala-CGC-006 are listed. The correlation analyses of the NAFLD activity score and (D) tRF-Val-CAC-005, (E) tiRNA-His-GTG-001, and (F) tRF-Ala-CGC-006 expression in plasma from patients with NAFLD are shown. The NAFLD activity score is plotted on the x-axis, and the tRNA fragment level is normalized to that of U6 on the y-axis, n = 114, R2 = 0.7787 (p < 0.001), R2 = 0.8286 (p < 0.0001), R2 = 0.7405 (p < 0.0001), respectively, Pearson’s r test. (G) Violin plot showing the relative expression of tRF-Val-CAC-005, tiRNA-His-GTG-001, and tRF-Ala-CGC-006 in plasma between NAFLD patients without fibrosis (n = 63) and NAFLD patients with any fibrosis (n = 51), ∗ ∗ ∗ p < 0.001, Student’s t-test.
